Modern motor vehicles offer extremely far-reaching possibilities for sensing the surrounding environment. In particular, sensor data picked up by environmental sensors, and/or communication data from an automobile-to-automobile communication can be used, for example, to establish an environment model which, inter alia, describes further road users as well as the ego-vehicle. This environment perception, which also allows a clear distinction between further road users, can be used to realize functions of driver assistance systems which aid the driver, and which relate to a particular evaluation object—to provide, for example, information about the same and/or to control the operation of the motor vehicle using the evaluation object.
An important group of such functions are longitudinal guidance functions which have an operating mode for following. So-called Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) systems, in which a minimum distance or a minimum time gap to a preceding motor vehicle is regulated, are an example of this. The preceding vehicle, as the evaluation object, is a follow object in this case. However, in particular with the increasing availability of automatic driving functions in motor vehicles, extended following functions have been proposed, in which a motor vehicle can be followed with a lateral offset, and/or complete tracking of a further road user is possible—in particular including passing maneuvers and the like.
The problem in this case is that, in many systems available today, little or no influence on the selection of the evaluation object, in particular the follow object, is granted to the driver. In this regard, DE 10 2013 215 370 A1 has proposed an approach to interpreting gestures of the driver for selecting an object existing outside the motor vehicle, via gesture recognition in a head-up display (HUD). Head-up displays in motor vehicles usually use the windshield as a reaction surface, and thus display area, which of course also shows the further road users due to its transparency. Contact analog information relating to objects which are visible through the windshield can be represented by an accurate-position overlay. DE 10 2013 215 370 A1, mentioned above, proposes the display of a cursor as a feedback element, indicating how the driver's gesture commands are being interpreted. In particular, other vehicles can also be marked in the display, and can particularly also be selected as a follow-up object in the context of an ACC system.
However, it is disadvantageous that a complex interpretation of gestures of the driver, and an assignment to further road users visible through the windshield and displayed on the same, need to be undertaken, which in turn is not easy to implement. In addition, the marking by means of a cursor is an additional task which requires an increased concentration of the driver in addition to the act of driving itself.